Sell Guns to Drug Cartels, Get a Promotion

Hypothetical scenario: At your current job, you were once in charge of clandestinely selling 2,000 firearms to Mexican drug cartels in the hopes of bringing down a big time leader, but instead those guns were later connected to multiple homicides (including a U.S. Border Patrol agent). Now, after investigations and apologies and so on, would you expect to get shit-canned and possibly charged with crimes, or would you expect to be promoted to a managerial position? If you work for the ATF, you'd get the latter!

At least that's what happened over the weekend to three ATF supervisors who worked on Operation Fast and Furious — the incredibly stupid scheme mentioned above, according to the Los Angeles Times. Instead of sweating it out in Arizona, the three are being relocated to cushy jobs in D.C. because of "the skills and abilities they have demonstrated throughout their careers." Some of the agents involved in the operation expressed regret that the guns they helped traffic across the border were connected to murders.

But surely some good came out of the operation, right? The Los Angeles Timesreports:

The program ran from November 2009 to January 2011, with the aim of identifying Mexican drug cartel leaders by allowing illegal purchases of firearms and then tracking those weapons. Nearly 200 were recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, and in December two semiautomatics were found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's slaying in Arizona.